Who will be the new Russian President in March 2008? Will he pursue the line traced by Putin, reinforcing an authoritarian regime and a controlled democracy, and putting himself in opposition to the EU? Or will he draw closer to Europe by re-establishing fundamental liberties? Europeans have become accustomed to the image of a Vladimir Putin who has ruled Russia with an iron hand since 2000, and believe that he will run for election (and win) once more. However, the Russian President keeps insisting that he will respect the Constitution, and not run again in 2008. It is impossible to answer all these questions with any confidence, as the transition period can be seen as an equation with several unknowns–of which the most important is Putin’s own intentions; the latter are themselves impossible to understand if they are considered in isolation from his political legacy.

The Legacy of Vladimir Putin’s Two Terms

There are two different perceptions of the Russian President’s political action. From the outside, Western observers traditionally sum up the Putin era in several issues which have been well publicised outside Russia: the Second Chechen War, so rich in violations of human rights; the dismantling of the multi-party system in Parliament, with the absence of parties sympathetic to Western democratic values; the progressive disappearance of media sources independent of the Kremlin, together with the installation of a system of ‘implicit political censure’; the brutality of the Russian approach to certain ex-Soviet Republics led by pro-Western leaders, such as the Ukrainian Viktor Yushchenko and the Georgian Mikhail Saakashvili; the ambiguity of a foreign policy combining dialogue with the West with collaboration with both the anti-Western Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and the rabidly anti-American Hugo Chavez; the steady reinforcing of neo-imperialist and anti-Western sentiments which are tolerated (and sometimes encouraged) by the regime; the generalisation of a corruption which has become systemic and seriously compromises the working of reforms; and finally the disproportionate reinforcing of the powers of the State, leading to the arbitrary exercise of power against political opponents who may be jailed under the pretext of economic crimes (such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky), or systematically harassed (such as the current opposition leader Gary Kasparov).

These negative images should be contrasted with the support given to Putin’s action by the large majority of Russians who vote regularly for him or for his Party, notably in the latest presidential, legislative and regional elections. By doing so the Russians give him credit for many positive advances which, even though they are highly publicised by the official media, are nevertheless actually perceptible inside Russia: the political stabilisation of the presidential regime, based on the strengthening of presidential power in the context of what is called ‘vertical power’ and ‘the dictatorship of the law’; uninterrupted economic growth throughout Putin’s two terms, in contrast with the endemic crisis and chaos linked to the unscrupulous privatisations of the Yeltsin years; the return of Russia to the international scene in the context of an all-round diplomatic activism engaging the EU, NATO, the United States and China, and also as a member of the USA-EU-NATO-Russian ‘Quartet’ in the establishment of the ‘road map’ for the resolution of the Israelo-Arab conflict; the clarity of a Kremlin policy based on patriotic values (with a certain glorification of Brezhnev-era socialism), but also on a multipolar world, with constructive opposition to the hegemony of a United States perceived as the new imperial power; and finally, the limitation of damage linked to the issue of Chechen independence–most Russians preferring a ‘bad peace’ in the North Caucasus to the possibility of the break-up of the Federation.